1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to coherent ultrasound imaging systems and, in particular, phased array ultrasound imaging systems operating in different scan formats and imaging modes such as, B-, F-, M- and D-modes. Specifically, the invention relates to transmit beamforming and generating ultrasound transmit waveforms.
2. Background of the Invention
An ultrasound scanner with an array transducer comprises a number of identical transmit and receive channels. Acting together, these channels produce transmit and receive beams, respectively. This process is referred as beamforming. It is accomplished by combining transmit/receive signals having variable delay and weight.
There are two mainstream approaches in transmit beamforming: analog and digital. Although prior analog beamformers support different apodization and delay profiles, their precision is inherently limited. Another problem with analog transmit beam formation is insufficient hardware resources to optimize the characteristics of transmit waveforms. Because of this factor, a typical excitation signal looks like a burst of a desired carrier frequency. The waveform shape or envelope is essentially fixed and, therefore, not optimal. The only adjustable parameter is the length of the gate in terms of an integer number of carrier cycles.
There are significant advantages in enhancing the flexibility of a transmit beamformer using digital processing (by way of example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,809,184, 4,896,287, 5,142,649, 5,549,111, 5,970,025, 6,104,673). For that reason, modern high-end ultrasound systems commonly employ digital techniques. The digital transmit beamformer architecture utilizes a plurality of programmable transmit processors each with a source of the desired waveform to be applied to one or more corresponding transducer elements. Since the initially produced waveform is digital, it is converted to analog in order to activate the transducer. The circuits provided this conversion comprises a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and a transmit amplifier (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,537,216).
Each channel of a digital transmit beamformer is a rather sophisticated signal processing system. Since there is a plurality of transmit channels, the manufacturing cost, power dissipation and space constraints per channel are quite tough. The major problems associated with this factor are as follows:                a) Operating at sampling frequencies within the range of 50-100 MHz, transmit DACs are fairly priced;        b) Conventionally used push-pull class B transmit amplifiers are characterized by low power efficiency.        
For the theoretical class B amplifier, an absolute maximum of efficiency is 78%. A known alternative to conventional class B designs is those based on pulse-width modulation (PWM) or class D amplifiers. Such designs use analog signal processing to form the PWM signal by comparing the modulating signal with a high frequency sawtooth or triangle waveform that acts as a carrier. The resulting binary signal of the comparator feeds a suitable set of power switches connected to the power supply. Ideally, the switches dissipate no heat energy, i.e., the theoretical efficiency of class D amplifiers approaches 100%. Having low power dissipation, PWM amplifiers can be effectively integrated. Due to the same reason, class D amplifiers are more preferable in terms of heatsinking. These factors are the forces behind the motivation to develop a class-D transmit power amplifier suitable for ultrasound imaging. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 6,135,963 entitled “Imaging System with Transmit Apodization Using Pulse-Width Variation” describes a method and apparatus for transmit apodization by controlling the duty cycle of the pulse. However, in view of foregoing consideration, building such a universally usable circuit seems to be problematic, despite today's advanced technology.
To maintain low diffraction sidelobes from a sampled aperture, the error Δφ associated with a finite resolution of the delay profile must be kept small. Generally, the average error should be less than the signal provided by one channel. It leads to Δφ<24/N, where N is the number of channels. For N=256, Δφ<2π/32. Thus, implementing a digital beamformer, one needs a 5-6-Bit resolution DAC simply in order to provide an adequate precision of delay profile. However, in addition to fine focusing, DAC supports apodization and shaping. Evidently, that the resulting amplitude resolution of a channel is supposed to be sufficient to maintain the above tasks altogether. In sum, to support digital transmit beamforming, each transmitter should operate with dynamic range of at least 9 Bit.
As well known (Black, H. S. Modulation Theory. New York: Van Nostrand Comp., 1953), in PWM waveform, the duty cycle is directly proportional to the modulating signal. Let FS denote a sampling rate of the double-sided uniform pulse-width modulation (UPWM). Then, to maintain, for example, a 7-bit amplitude resolution, the carrier frequency, FC, would have to be sampled at FS=2·27·FC. Thus, for a 10 MHz transducer, the power switches would operate at a sub-nanosecond range. Given a 100-200 Volt pulse amplitude, building such a digital amplifier is quite challenging. Besides, running at higher frequencies, the efficiency of a Class D amplifier would be rather defined by dynamic power dissipation than the on/off switch resistance.